—­So there was one Judas among them,—­I remarked.

—­Well,—­said the Master,—­they ’ve been whitewashing Judas of late.  But never mind him.  I did not say there was not one rogue on the average among a dozen men.  I don’t see how that would interfere with my proposition.  If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were twelve men in your club, and one of ’em had red hair, I don’t see that you have materially damaged my statement.

—­I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which was more apparent than real, very evidently, and he went on.

—­When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundred—­Did you ever read my book, the new edition of it, I mean?

It is rather awkward to answer such a question in the negative, but I said, with the best grace I could, “No, not the last edition.”

—­Well, I must give you a copy of it.  My book and I are pretty much the same thing.  Sometimes I steal from my book in my talk without mentioning it, and then I say to myself, “Oh, that won’t do; everybody has read my book and knows it by heart.”  And then the other I says,—­you know there are two of us, right and left, like a pair of shoes,—­the other I says, “You’re a—­something or other—­fool.  They have n’t read your confounded old book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it.”  Another time, I say, thinking I will be very honest, “I have said something about that in my book”; and then the other I says, “What a Balaam’s quadruped you are to tell ’em it’s in your book; they don’t care whether it is or not, if it’s anything worth saying; and if it isn’t worth saying, what are you braying for?” That is a rather sensible fellow, that other chap we talk with, but an impudent whelp.  I never got such abuse from any blackguard in my life as I have from that No. 2 of me, the one that answers the other’s questions and makes the comments, and does what in demotic phrase is called the “sarsing.”

—­I laughed at that.  I have just such a fellow always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of the “ape-like human being” born with him rather than civilized instincts.  One does not have to be a king to know what it is to keep a king’s jester.

—­I mentioned my book,—­the Master said, because I have something in it on the subject we were talking about.  I should like to read you a passage here and there out of it, where I have expressed myself a little more freely on some of those matters we handle in conversation.  If you don’t quarrel with it, I must give you a copy of the book.  It’s a rather serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it.  It has made my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one may use a figure.  Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided doses, as my friends the doctors say.